Human Capital: Nurturing Capacities for Growth

Stakeholder Engagement & Materiality

Stakeholders are individuals, groups of individuals or organizations who either affect or are affected by our operations. Regularly engaging with our stakeholders is imperative for attaining a holistic perspective of areas of concern, and identifying opportunities for improving our business processes and performance. Stakeholder engagement enables development of a trust-based and transparent relationship with our stakeholders. Through this process, Company should informs and educates its stakeholders to promote inclusive decision making and actions that, in turn, will have positive impact on the ecosystem.

Identifying Key Issues

Identification of an exhaustive list of issues that may be relevant to company and its stakeholders

Interaction with stakeholders (such as Head of Departments) to shortlist key issues relevant to  company and its stakeholders

StakeholderMapping

Mapping key issues across stakeholders and prioritizing them.

Selecting key stakeholders with whom to interact.

Stakeholder Response

Formulating stakeholder-wise questionnaires, deploying them through relevant departments and facilitating stakeholder engagement at various sites

Understanding Stakeholder perception of the company’s sustainability and their key concerns

Collating & Analyzing Response

Summarizing responses from stakeholder interviews or surveys and recording them in pre-designed format

Analysis of emerging patterns with respect to stakeholder groups and development of materiality matrix with respect to the results obtained from the stakeholder analysis.

Sustainability Strategy

Companies should work rigorously working to reduce the impact of our operations on the environment and society. This involves taking strategic initiatives and making investments in clean energy such as wind and solar with key Focus areas:

GHG Emissions (Scope I and II)

33 % reduction of GHG emission intensity.
5% reduction of Specific GHG emission. (Additional Corporate Level
Target).

Specific Energy Consumption

5% reduction of specific energy in LHC & PC products
5% reduction of Specific Energy Consumption. (Additional Corporate Level
Target)

Water Consumption PP 45% reduction water consumption intensity.

15% reduction of specific fresh water consumption. (Additional Corporate
Level Target)

Waste Water Recycling PP 5% increase in waste water recycling

Zero Discharge at plants (Additional Corporate Level Target)

Training/Awareness on Sustainability
100 % of our employees and all new joinees to be made aware within one year of their joining

Fundamental elements of Sustainability Process

Following are the main fundamental elements of Sustainability Process:

The GRI content index on pages 108-115 gives a detailed reference to the GRI performance indicators and standard disclosures. Along with GRI G4 it also adheres to the following reporting formats: PP Nine principles of National Voluntary Guidelines (NVG) on Social, Environmental and
Economic responsibilities of business, published by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs,
Government of India.

Industry guidance on voluntary sustainability reporting (2010) developed by industry association for environmental and social issues.

Principles and disclosure requirements under United Nations Global Compact (UNGC).

ISO 26000:2010 guidance on organizational social responsibility.

Material issues were identified through a materiality assessment and stakeholder engagement exercise
that was undertaken at locations (including project sites and offices) in consultation with different stakeholders and are referred in the relevant sections of this report. Each material aspect is mapped against the GRI G4 guidelines. In order to highlight the specific challenges faced by company and our initiatives towards addressing these we have further examined in the chapter on ‘Business Growth and Profitability’.

CSR and sustainability

Corporate sustainability essentially refers to the role that companies can play in meeting the agenda of sustainable development and entails a balanced approach to economic progress, social progress and environmental stewardship. CSR in India tends to focus on what is done with profits after they are made. On the other hand, sustainability is about factoring the social and environmental impacts of conducting business, that is, how profits are made. Hence, much of the Indian practice of CSR is an important component of sustainability or responsible business, which is a larger idea, a fact that is evident from various sustainability frameworks. An interesting case in point is the NVGs for social, environmental and economic responsibilities of business issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in June 2011. Principle eight relating to inclusive development encompasses most of the aspects covered by the CSR clause of the Companies Act, 2013. However, the remaining eight principles relate to other aspects of the business. The UN Global Compact, a widely used sustainability framework has 10 principles covering social, environmental, human rights and governance issues, and what is described as CSR is implicit rather than explicit in these principles.

Community engagement

A community can be defined as a homogenous group of individuals bound together geographically, politically, culturally or by certain values, principles or shared characteristics.

Steps for robust community engagement:

Assess the local context: Understanding the characteristics and complexities of the local landscape and use this information for strategic planning of community engagement.

Involve communities: Support and facilitation of the process of community-driven planning to enable communities to define their own goals, identify opportunities and assets they plan to utilise or share, and prioritise areas of potential engagement with the company and other local development actors.

Identify and categorise key stakeholders: Creation of a list of the individuals, groups, and institutions that could affect or be affected by any community engagement project. This step identifies and generates knowledge about individuals and local organisations in order to understand their behaviours, intentions, inter-relations and interests.

Project implementation: Identifying the best way to deliver a project in view of several variables, such as the objectives of community engagement, project timeframe, budget and local operating context.

Measure and communicate results: Monitoring and evaluation to use the information collected in future planning and communicating these results to all stakeholders including the community, the company and other development partners.

Planning and strategies CSR and Sustainability

The first step towards formalising CSR projects in a corporate structure is the constitution of a CSR committee as per the specifications in the Companies Act, 2013, clause 135.
This is an excellent starting point for any company new to CSR. In case a company already practices CSR, this committee should be set up at the earliest so that it can guide the alignment of the company’s activities with the requirements of the Act. For effective implementation, the CSR committee must also oversee the systematic development of a set of processes and guidelines for CSR to deliver its proposed value to the company, including:

• one-time processes such as developing the CSR strategy and operationalising the institutional mechanism

• repetitive processes such as the annual CSR policy, due diligence of the implementation partner, project development, project approval, contracting, budgeting and payments, monitoring, impact measurement and reporting and communication A set of such enabling processes, their inter-relationships and the sequence in which they need to be developed have been identified below:

Step one: Developing a CSR strategy and policy
Step two: Operationalising the institutional mechanism
Step three: Due diligence of the implementation partner
Step four: Project development
Step five: Project approval
Step six: Finalising the arrangement with the implementing agency
Step seven: Progress monitoring and reporting
Step eight: Impact measurement
Step nine: Report consolidation and communication

(Source: https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/publications/2013/handbook-on-corporate-social-responsibility-in-india.pdf)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India

The Corporate Social Responsibility concept in India is governed by Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 and Rules made thereunder wherein the criteria has been provided for assessing the CSR eligibility of a company, Implementation and Reporting of their CSR Policies. India having the most elaborated CSR mechanism and implementation strategy has started its journey to set a benchmark in attaining sustainability goals and stakeholder activism in nation building.

The CSR ambit is getting bigger and for upcoming years it would turn as a unique knowledge base for analyzing and achieving sustainability goals as among various large economies India is a country which has assured by mandating CSR through its legislative action.

CSR in India has traditionally been seen as a philanthropic activity. And in keeping with the Indian tradition, it was an activity that was performed but not deliberated. As a result, there is limited documentation on specific activities related to this concept. However, what was clearly evident that much of this had a national character encapsulated within it, whether it was endowing institutions to actively participating in India’s freedom movement, and embedded in the idea of trusteeship. As some observers have pointed out, the practice of CSR in India still remains within the philanthropic space, but has moved from institutional building (educational, research and cultural) to community development through various projects. Also, with global influences and with communities becoming more active and demanding, there appears to be a discernible trend, that while CSR remains largely restricted to community development, it is getting more strategic in nature (that is, getting linked with business) than philanthropic, and a large number of companies are reporting the activities they are undertaking in this space in their official websites, annual reports, sustainability reports and even publishing CSR reports.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a broad discipline. In context of business, Sustainability inspires and enable business to lead the way to a sustainable economy.

There is no universally agreed definition on what sustainability means. However, The United Nation’s 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future noted that sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the well-being of future generations.

The concept continues to expand in scope. In 2000, the Earth Charter broadened the definition of sustainability to include the idea of a global society “founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

To achieve sustainability, we have to evaluate our policies on:

•             Environmental protection.

•             Social responsibility.

•             Economic practice.